DEATH IN MANILA IS ‘BAD BUSINESS’
Philippines’ president Rodrigo Duterte is waging a war on drugs that has so far killed at least 5,000 people. Funeral parlours have plenty of work as a result, but most simply want the killing to stop
Busy undertaker says death toll in Duterte’s drugs war is getting out of hand,
MANILA // Business has never been as brisk for undertaker Alejandro Ormeneta but, after five months on the front lines of the Philippines’ drug war, all he wants is for the killings to stop. Mr Ormeneta and his colleagues at a funeral parlour in Manila say they are retrieving an average of five bodies a night, mostly from the slums, and his grisly routine has left him questioning the savage forces unleashed by president Rodrigo Duterte’s campaign on crime.
“This shouldn’t happen, they are people, not animals,” Mr Ormeneta, 47, says as he recalls removing three nails hammered into the skull of an alleged drug trafficker.
“I think he was still alive when they hammered in the nails. They tied him up first, put tape round his head, then hammered the nails in ... it must have been so painful. I felt so sorry for him.”
On a typical night recently, Mr Ormeneta walked down a narrow slum alleyway into a shanty where masked assailants had shot a man dead. The victim’s body still smelled of the alcohol that he must have been drinking shortly before being killed.
The victim’s sister wailed as police turned over his body on a concrete floor soaked in blood, revealing several gunshots to his head and body.
Police later said that Danilo Bolante, 47, had sold shabu, the cheap crystal methamphetamine that Mr Duterte says is ruining society and must be eradicated. But Bolante’s sister, Chona Balina, insists he had stopped selling the drug and had even reported himself to police as part of Mr Duterte’s Tokhang campaign to pressure drug traffickers and users into surrendering.
“Why launch Tokhang if that’s what they are going to do with people who are already changing?” she says.
Mr Duterte won presidential elections this year in a landslide after promising an unprecedented war on drugs in which tens of thousands of people would be killed.
Part of his stump speech on the campaign trail was tongue- incheek business advice for people to set up funeral homes in preparation for the killings.
“The funeral parlours will be packed ... I’ll supply the dead bodies,” he said to cheers and laughter at one campaign rally. Mr Duterte has been true to his word with police reporting that they have killed more than
‘ They [small-time traffickers] are victims of drugs. They needed to stave off hunger, perhaps for their children. They should have been given a chance to change Alejandro Ormeneta Undertaker
2,000 people suspected of drug involvement. A further 3,000 people have been murdered by unknown gunmen, triggering fears of widespread extrajudicial killings.
The deaths look certain to continue with Mr Duterte saying in September he would be “happy to slaughter” three million drug addicts and repeatedly vowing no let-up until the illegal drug trade has been eliminated.
While there are vocal critics of the drug war at home and abroad, surveys show an overwhelming majority of Filipinos support Mr Duterte’s crusade.
Still, funeral parlours, while busy, are not necessarily making lots of money, with relatives of many victims often too poor to be able to pay for a funeral. “I don’t know how we can afford this because I have no job,” Ms Balina says after agreeing to a 62,000 pesos funeral package (Dh4,570) with Veronica Memorial Chapels for services that include embalming, a casket and a wake.
Funeral director Rico Teodocio says prices range from 18,000 to 400,000 pesos, but that he often gives discounts, especially for families of alleged drug users, some of whom pay in coins or raise money from gambling at wakes. He says some also beg cemeteries for free caskets.
“I don’t know if ‘ pathetic’ is the right term to use but you really pity them. We suffer too because we give our lowest price,” he says.
Veronica and other funeral parlours say bodies are frequently left unclaimed because relatives of the victims do not know about the death, are afraid of being linked to drugs or are simply too poor.
In these situations, the bodies are kept for two or three months then buried in public cemeteries, with funeral homes picking up the tab.
“It’s sad. They die without any one coming for them,” Mr Ormeneta says, pointing to blackened corpses at the back of the morgue.
Some undertakers treat the profession as a business, but Mr Ormeneta, a father of four and a Roman Catholic who has been in the industry for 18 years, has been emotionally affected by the drug war.
He says he often thinks about the person with nails in his skull, and has a firm conviction that small- time traffickers did not deserve to die.
“They are victims of drugs. They needed to stave off hunger, perhaps for their children. They should have been given a chance to change,” he says.
“Isn’t that written in the Bible? Thou shalt not kill.”